Save my damaged WMA data

July 9, 2019 12:22 PM

Hey there! I recorded this audio last week and I cannot play it. It is supposed to be 33 minutes long and it also shows 33 on the display, however, it just stops after 10 seconds! I'd be super grateful for anyone who could help me out here!! this is the link to the file
posted by liv.stella to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

https://ask.metafilter.com/216650/Help-fix-a-corrupted-wma-file

There's discussion and a solution that worked for someone else in there.
posted by radiosilents at 12:39 PM on July 9, 2019

Hmm… I tried pocams' solution from that thread, but it didn't seem to fix things for me.
posted by JiBB at 1:06 PM on July 9, 2019

From around 48K onward the downloaded file appears to be nothing but null bytes so I don't think it can be salvaged.
posted by Bangaioh at 1:15 PM on July 9, 2019 [3 favorites]

I had a look at the file and I'm afraid none of my tricks from before will work with this one. With the WMAs that I was able to repair, it was the file header that was damaged. With this one, as Bangaioh says, the file is just blank after the first few seconds, so there's nothing to fix.

It's possible that you may find something on the recorder with data recovery software like PhotoRec - if you plan to try that, don't use the recorder until after you've run the recovery. I have to say, though, that's a very long shot. I think it's most likely that the data has been lost. I would also suggest discarding the recorder, as it's likely to corrupt other files in the future.
posted by pocams at 7:57 PM on July 9, 2019